Fredric Jameson

Fredric Jameson is an American literary critic, sociologist, and Marxist political theorist. His best-known books include Post-Modernism, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Marxism, and Form. Fredric Jameson uses the term ‘Cultural dominant’ to ensure that the historical period is not understood as an enormous, single, bounded entity, but as a presence and coexistence of a variety of alternative competing features.

It is a time of postmodernity in which people are floating and unable to comprehend the multinational capitalist system and their produced commodities that triggered for consumers’ cultural behavioral patterns.

Modernity could represent reality simply in literal signs. It assumes that signs by themselves, detached from any external reality. He argues that the capitalistic mode of production has controlled, dominated, and shaped our cognitive behavior. He sees post-modernism as an extension of modernity.

It argues that postmodern society is characterized by superficiality and lack of depth. Its cultural products are satisfied with- surface images and do not explore deeply into the underlying meanings. His treatise explores the relationship between artistic, celebrity culture, and advertisement that flourished pop art and artificial lifestyle. According to him, the post-modern world and the people in it have been fragmented and the effect that remains is freed and impersonal. There is a loss of historicity as it has a ruptured pre-established set of ideologies and practices. Electronic media especially television and computer networking articulate nothing apart from flattened images.

• Television
• The Problem of History
• Commodity Culture
• Market and Media

1. Television

The quickest way to understand the ideas is to turn on your television. Video is the most influential medium of postmodernism. It makes virtually no difference in what reality the flow of images; i.e., it is about video technology. What every TV show is really about is video technology itself. This is just as true for news shows and commercials as for entertainment.

We see the cutting edge of Post-modernism most clearly in entertainment and commercial information. Those are the moments when we realize most clearly that the image itself, not the content. So it makes no sense to ask about the meaning of the image. When we watch TV we don’t ask what it means rather trans-code in our mind. This would be the modern way of decoding the message.

2.The Problem of History

Postmodern images as exemplified by TV images have a paradoxical double meaning. The concept of ‘newness’ disappears since there is nothing ‘old’ to contrast it with. So we no longer care much about the difference between the old and the new. Since that difference is the essence of history, we stop thinking about history. We as that constant change is a permanent feature of our lives.

Our loss- of past and future take away this feeling of depth. Our images of past, resent and future is part of one superficial plane- All these images are thrown together. We compare our experience to media images. We picture our lives to ourselves as if they were Hollywood movies or episodes in a TV series. All of this pseudo-reality persuades us that the flow of historical time doesn’t have anything important to tell us. So we don’t even try to locate ourselves in the context of history.

3.Commodity Culture

Is there anything that holds us all together? Perhaps above all, it is a simple, fact that we all watch the same commercials on TV and go shopping in the same supermarkets and shopping malls. Culture is more than ever before dominated by the things that we buy and use.

The ‘market’ here means the sum total of all the production and consumption processes taking place in the world. When market and culture are fused all of life becomes one great marketplace. So, every little locally handmade pottery mug is now a link in the global marketplace and its endless chain of commodity culture. Culture is made up mainly of acts of consumption or images related to acts of consumption.

4. Market and Media

The fascination with the media is crucial to understanding postmodernism and late capitalism. But we can all expect someday to own computers, home entertainment centers, fax machines, cellular phones, and all the rest. When we think about the commodities that appeal to us most, we are likely to think about these high-tech media. They do nothing but transmit data electronically. Yet we are obsessed with consuming all these data are sign-images.

Post-modernism theory tells us that they are just more channels on our mental TV; they have no meaning beyond themselves. They are now the most prestigious commodities for sale in the marketplace.

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